


nocte ad lunam

by sakurahaiku



Category: ONEWE (Band)
Genre: Artist AU, Gen, No Beta, No Romance, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29796345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakurahaiku/pseuds/sakurahaiku
Summary: Dongmyeong had always learned that art was supposed to portray perfection, that one doesn’t draw what is there but what one wants to see.(Harin had learned to see the beauty in blemishes, found the allure of inadequacies)
Relationships: Ju Harin & Son Dongmyeong
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	nocte ad lunam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Myeongluvr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myeongluvr/gifts).



> title means 'in the moonlit night' in Latin, according to Google Translate
> 
> a quick drabble

Dongmyeong learns to run on the street, Harin at his side, spray cans in his bag. He had never been much of an athlete during his school years – a lover not a fighter – but with every midnight escapade his legs grow stronger. He had never been at the point of atrophy, but he feels now as if his muscles are thanking him.

Art, he had always believed, was solitary and slow, methodical and peaceful. It was determined lines on paper, charcoal smeared on fingers, paint stains on shirts. It was freeing in a controlled way. It certainly wasn’t illegal.

His mediums had always been school sanctioned, papers and easels and paints. It was exact, the expectations nailed down to a science, an art, so to say. He had never learned to deviate from expectancies, he had never been allowed. The option to rebel from his craft had never even crossed his mind.

But, neither had running. Neither had midnight runs and street art.

Harin is an artist too, of sorts. Dongmyeong meets him at a street fair, where the older is working on a highly detailed piece of sidewalk chalk art. Dongmyeong can picture it perfectly in his mind. A bouquet of flowers, vibrant and lovely, butterflies and birds encircling. It was stunning, Harin’s use of what he perceived as a limited medium. Dongmyeong walks around all the other artists sitting on the concrete, but none seem to capture his attention as Harin did. He finds himself coming back around and around to see the flowers bloom, and the older calls him out for it.

Greetings are exchanged, numbers are swapped, and a friendship is born. They bond over their mutual interest and love in art. Harin prefers grandiose works, while Dongmyeong creates smaller, daintier pieces. They both find their muses in the world around of them, and Dongmyeong learns to see the world through Harin’s eyes. Finds the imperfections in flower petals, sees the tilt in a bird’s wings. It was these imperfections, Dongmyeong finds, that drew him so impossibly deep into that chalk drawing that day.

Harin had learned to see the beauty in blemishes, found the allure of inadequacies.

Dongmyeong had always learned that art was supposed to portray perfection, that one doesn’t draw what is there but what one wants to see. No one, he had been taught, wanted to see tree rot. Rather, they wanted to see the mighty grandeur of an oak tree, mighty and strong, unmarred by decay. His friendship with Harin had shown him how limited his worldview had been; he could see more beauty now than he had ever imagined possible.

One day Harin asks if Dongmyeong has ever painted under the light of the stars, with the moon as a guide. Dongmyeong has never, has only painted under the blinding sun and disorienting halogenic lights. Harin smirks, says he will pick the younger up the next night, to bring a backpack and nothing else. Dongmyeong stares up at the taller, wide-eyed, curious; he is a sedentary artist but this prospect sparks a sense of wanderlust in him that is unfamiliar.

True to his word, Harin comes by in the middle of the night. The moon is in waning gibbous, coming down from the splendor of the full moon. Dongmyeong feels tired, but his greed for what is to come is insatiable. Dongmyeong watches as Harin places spray cans in his backpack, follows as Harin leads him down the stairs of the apartment building. Shadows Harin through streets and alleyways, with only the moon as a guide. Harin knows where he’s going, has clearly scoped out the path during the light of day.

Their canvas for the night, he learns, is an abandoned barn on the outskirts of town. It’s painted a stark white, though stained by dirt and wear. The illegality of it all strikes Dongmyeong; he worries about the fact that they must be on private property. Harin only shrugs, hands him one of the spray cans, and tells him to create.

And, in tandem, they create.

They paint mindlessly until shapes start to form. Their minds are in synch, and their colour choices blend seamlessly. By the time Harin says that they should leave, shapes are beginning to form. Dongmyeong mourns the unfinished masterpiece, but Harin only smiles and tells him to run. And run they do, through fields and roads and alleyways and streets, until they make it back to the steps of Dongmyeong’s apartment.

They go back again and again and again, until their masterpiece is complete. He stares at the scene they have managed to create: birds in a cacophony of colours flying through a moonlit night. They fly over a field of flowers, wild and free, just like them. Dongmyeong and Harin are the subjects of their own piece, children of art and the moon. They take their pictures and run home, just like they have every night. Harin had always drawn ahead of Dongmyeong, but now the younger can keep up with the older, chasing him into the night.

The illegal mural appears on the local news station. Dongmyeong’s art teachers tuts and expresses her disapproval, her dislike for whatever hooligans thought defacing a barn would be a grand statement. Dongmyeong says that it’s somewhat pretty, and his teacher shakes her head forlornly. And Dongmyeong goes back to his controlled lines and perfect images of nature, hoping his teacher doesn’t notice the ripped leaves and slightly browning fruit of his apple tree.

It was not a grand statement, it was freedom.

And now that Dongmyeong has had his taste of imperfection, he can feel it constantly calling. Beckoning him back into the arms of a moonlit night, to be a bird once again, wild and free.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading


End file.
